A CHEMICAL PROLOGUE. 673 



elements and really inquire into their secrets, lias been hurriedly 

 introduced to all of those available, and has been left to struggle 

 as best he could with their multitudinous compounds. The result 

 has been to confuse, and in many cases finally to disgust. Chem- 

 istry and I do not wonder at it has been voted " dry " by the 

 majority of college boys. 



This result has come about because the science has been unsci- 

 entific. The meaning of science is to know, but one knows very 

 little from such a gallop among the varied forms of matter. If 

 one knows thoroughly two or three typical gases, two or three 

 typical liquids, and two or three typical solids, he knows chemis- 

 try. He may not be worth much as a reference-book ; but then 

 encyclopedias are nearly always available, while thoughtful men 

 are rare. Further, the quality of such knowledge deserves atten- 

 tion. It has become a part of the man himself, for he has learned 

 it the way children learn things. It is no longer simply a fact of 

 chemistry; it is a fact of life, a part of the oft-repeated expe- 

 riences which go to make up his intelligence. Imagine for a 

 moment the amusement of a bright boy were he asked whether he 

 remembered if stones are hard, or lead heavy, or glass brittle. 

 His answer will be that of course he does not ; he knoivs that they 

 are. It is knowledge of a similar definiteness that the scientific 

 method strives to cultivate. Studied in this way, chemistry ceases 

 to be a matter of simple memory, and becomes almost exclusively 

 a branch of pure reasoning. It passes from the objective to the 

 subjective world, and becomes a valuable means of mental de- 

 velopment as well as a study now well worth pursuing for its 

 own sake. 



One of the first requisites, then, in the proper presentation of 

 chemistry seems to be the entire banishment of that alien element 

 which makes it a thing by itself, and the insistence upon its recog- 

 nition as a purely natural extension of common knowledge. Any 

 experience in life will form a suitable starting-point. It may 

 readily be analyzed into its components ; the chemical element 

 can not well be missed. If the occurrence be such as we com- 

 monly call accidental, or, more strictly speaking, if it be devoid of 

 human agency, it will resolve itself into two terms, conveniently 

 expressible by the words matter and motion. If the occurrence 

 be voluntarily producible, a third element is involved that of 

 will. It would be foreign to the present purpose to enter the 

 vexed discussion of whether this third element, this unknown 

 something which makes the distinction between conscious and 

 unconscious existence, is the cause or the result of those reactions 

 in matter and force with which will, as we know it, seems to be 

 indissolubly connected. It will be sufficient for the present to call 

 it x, a designation involving neither issues nor compromises. 



vol. xxxvi. 43 



